Sunday, December 31, 2006

the great (and i mean one of the greatest ever, in the company of arthur c clarke, philip k dick) science fiction writer stanislav lem (who wrote in polish) once wrote a story about a robot poet that could produce astonishing feats of poetry. here is an excerpt with a hat-tip to the genius of the translator from polish to english. wish the nytimes and r thapar could find robots with this level of class to write their fiction. i especially like that bit about 'savage, spectacular suicide' : describes perfectly the act of our good mohammedan friends about to go to heaven and receive 72 whatevers.

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"Have it compose a poem--a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism and in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!!"

"And why not throw in a full exposition of the general theory of nonlinear automata while you're at it?" growled Trurl. "You can't give it such idiotic--"

But he didn't finish. A melodious voice filled the hall with the following:

strange because mohammedans typically prefer to send their children to madrassas rather than to regular schools.

thus, perhaps 'literacy' means just literacy in arabic. which is of little value in the real world unless you are planning to be a saudi-funded sleeper cell member, like all those ubiquitous 'kashmiri emporia'.

the last time there were any scientific ideas in arabic was during the christists' Dark Ages, when their church ensured that they were even more benighted than the arabs.

anyway, how does this demographic data jell with all the breast-beating about 'disadvantaged mohammedans'? well, it doesn't. that's because mohammedans are heavily pampered by the indian government, not disadvantaged.

let's face it, the average mohammedan is far better off in india than anywhere else. in most mohammedan states, he has to face sectarian violence from fellow-mohammedans. but in the state of indhimmia, he is positively spoiled with hand-outs, and he doesn't have to fear any violence: he is in fact the one handing out violence with impunity. (see afzal guru).

New Delhi, Dec 28: The literacy rate among Muslims is the lowest in the country from among the different communities, but they fare better than the majority Hindus in eight states.

The literacy rate among Muslim males was high - above 80 per cent - in Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Gujarat, according to a new book 'Population of India in the New Millennium: Census 2001' by noted researcher and demographer Mahendra K. Premi.

As for Muslim women, a high literacy rate of about 70 per cent was recorded in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh.

Muslim men had the highest literacy rate of 93.7 per cent in Kerala, almost at par with Hindus who had a literacy rate of 93.8 per cent, as per the 2001 Census.

In Chhattisgarh, the literacy rate of Muslim males was 90.5 per cent, while Hindus lagged behind at 76.8 per cent.

In communally-sensitive Gujarat, Muslim men fared better than Hindus with an 82.9 per cent literacy level compared to the majority community's 79.1 per cent literacy rate.

Muslim men had a better literacy rate than their Hindu counterparts in six states - Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Tamil Nadu.

The percentage of literate Muslim women was higher than that of the Hindu community in nine states - Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu.

They recorded the highest literacy rate in Kerala (85.5 per cent), compared to Hindus with 86.7 per cent. " It seems the level of economic and social development of the state is not the only important factor in Muslim literacy rates but it is the tradition of sending children to school or not,"Premi, a former JNU professor , says in the book.

At the national level, Muslim men and women have the poorest literacy rates of 67.6 per cent and 50.1 per cent respectively.

The overall literacy rate of the country as per the 2001 Census is about 65 per cent. (Agencies)

Congress party and Sonia Gandhi still using Muslims for votes - Muslim males are more literate than males of other major religions Media Release Dec. 29, 2006

The book, "Population of India in the new millennium, Census 2001," released at a function here on Wednesday says Muslim males are more literate than males of other major religions.

According to it, the literacy among Muslim males in Andhra Pradesh was 76.5 per cent as against Hindus'' 70.3 per cent while it was 82.4 per cent in case of the Muslim males in Gujarat as against 79.1 per cent of Hindu males. Same was true in Madhya Pradesh where 79.8 per cent Muslim males were educated compared to 75.5 per cent Hindu males.

Even among women, Muslims were more educated with literacy of 59.1 per cent as against Hindu women's 49.2 per cent. The study, however, admits that unlike the males, the literacy rate of Muslim women was not up to the mark in most of the states.

Harping on a demographer's book, the Bhartiya Janata Party on Thursday questioned the statistical data of the Sachar Committee on Muslims'' educational deprivation as not definitive and asked the government to come clean on the basis of the committee's recomme-ndations that it is in a hurry to implement.

Party spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters here that the book's chapter on religious composition was an eye-opener that literacy among Muslims was much higher than others in most states and the government cannot wish away these statistics culled out from the 2001 Census former Jawahar Lal Nehru University (JNU) professor Mahendra K Premi, who commands high respect as a noted demographer.

take this and manmohan singh's absurd, anti-constitutional rants justifiying apartheid; and compare it to the next post that shows how mohammedans aren't actually so illiterate after all. they just cannot compete because of poor education, which they themselves choose.

as they say, you can bring a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.

---------- Forwarded message ----------From: am

am has sent you the following:

Daniel Pipes' Weblog

Muslims "Lagging Behind"

November 29, 2006

The book that most shaped my understanding of modern Muslim life was Wilfred Cantwell Smith's Islam in Modern History (Princeton, 1957). To reduce Smith's nuanced thesis to a few sentences, he argues that Muslim military, economic, and cultural success in the premodern period created an expectation that God's people would be rewarded for their faith in mundane ways. That expectation left Muslims incapable of explaining what happened when, in modern times, they fell behind in those same arenas.

The fundamental malaise of modern Islam is a sense that something has gone wrong with Islamic history. The fundamental problem of modern Muslims is how to rehabilitate that history: to set it going again in full vigour, so that Islamic society may once again flourish as a divinely guided society should and must (p. 41).

The trauma of modern Islam has already lasted over two centuries, with no end in sight.

I presented an abbreviated and updated version of Smith's thesis in a 2000 article, " Islam and Islamism - Faith and Ideology ," which included this sentence: "Whatever index one employs, Muslims can be found clustering toward the bottom-whether measured in terms of their military prowess, political stability, economic development, corruption, human rights, health, longevity or literacy." Islamists angrily jumped on this observation, though it seems rather self-evident and can be confirmed by looking at nearly any index of political openness, civil liberties, economic development, scientific breakthroughs, technological prowess, and the like.

This background comes to mind with the publication of two recent studies, in the United Kingdom and in India. Each of them makes my point in spades. Some highlights of the British report, as summarized by Reuters:

Based on data from the 2001 national census, the 162-page study paints a relatively bleak picture of life for Britain's 1.8 million Muslims, most of whom are ethnic Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. "Of the different religious groups, unemployment rates among Muslims were more than double those in other groups," it found. Some 17 percent of Muslim men and 18 percent of Muslim women were unemployed compared to just five percent of Christian men and four percent of Christian women. "Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Black African groups had low levels of participation in the labor market," the study found. "Their high unemployment rates suggest that even when active in the labor market they experienced difficulties finding employment."

A third of Muslims lived in households which, according to the census definition, were overcrowded, compared to just six percent of Britain's Christians. Some 44 percent of ethnic Bangladeshi and 26 percent of ethnic Pakistani households were deemed to be overcrowded, against an average for the country of seven percent. In a country of nearly 59 million where home ownership is widespread and regarded as a key measure of wealth, Muslims were less likely to own their own houses than followers of other faiths. Just over half of Muslim households owned their houses compared to a national average of nearly 70 percent.

The Indian report has not been released, only portions leaked. From a summary by the prime minister's office: The Muslim community is "lagging behind" in most areas: they are "relatively poor, more illiterate, has lower access to education, lower representation in public- and private-sector jobs and lower availability of bank credit for self-employment. In urban areas, the community mostly lives in slums characterized by poor municipal infrastructure." Some particulars, as presented by the New York Times:

in many states Muslims are significantly overrepresented in prison. In the western state of Maharashtra, for instance, Muslims make up 10.6 percent of the population but 32.4 percent of those convicted or facing trial. In the famed national bureaucracy, the Indian Administrative Service, Muslims made up only 2 percent of officers in 2006. Among district judges in 15 states surveyed, 2.7 percent were Muslim.

Educational disparities were among the most striking. Among Muslims, Mr. Shariff said, the literacy rate is about 59 percent, compared with more than 65 percent among Indians as a whole. On average, a Muslim child attends school for three years and four months, compared with a national average of four years. Less than 4 percent of Muslims graduate from school, compared with 6 percent of the total population. Less than 2 percent of the students at the elite Indian Institutes of Technology are Muslim. Equally revealing, only 4 percent of Muslim children attend madrasas, Mr. Shariff said.

The gaps in employment are likely to be among the most politically explosive. Muslims appear to be overrepresented in the informal sector of day laborers and street vendors and underrepresented in the public sector. Muslims secured about 15 percent of all government jobs, considerably less than the share filled by "backward" castes and Dalits, those who were considered "untouchables" in the Hindu caste system.

Comment: With few exceptions – such as Muslims in the United States – the pattern of Muslim backwardness is nearly universal. Accepting this fact would be a first step toward remedying it. (November 29, 2006)

TO CONNOISSEURS of irony, who often find rich pickings in politics, last week's offering was a vintage one. British delegates to the inaugural conference of the United Nations Convention against Corruption, in Jordan, were piously denouncing sleaze and promising to tackle corruption "wherever we find it—whether here or abroad". At home, meanwhile, their colleagues were busily quashing a two-year investigation into allegations of bribery in connection with the country's biggest-ever defence contract, the Al-Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia.

Britain has long turned a blind eye to the bribery of foreign officials (until recently such business costs were even tax-deductible), but of late it has been trying to polish its public image. Much of the pressure for change has come from non-government organisations and Britain's fellow rich-country members of the OECD. America, which has banned bribing foreigners since 1977, was especially peeved that its companies were at a disadvantage while everyone else merrily bribed away.

In 1998 Britain ratified the OECD's convention against bribing foreign officials, but its commitment to the treaty has been half-hearted. Instead of passing comprehensive legislation to meet its new obligations, the government argued that Britain's existing laws against domestic corruption were sufficient. It was finally persuaded to ban explicitly the bribing of foreign officials by British citizens and companies, no matter where the offence took place, in the anti-terrorism act of 2001 .

But loopholes abound. Take so-called "facilitation payments", a high-faluting name for little bribes. Although they are technically illegal, the government says British firms are unlikely to be prosecuted for stumping up when officials insist on them in countries where they are the normal practice. Firms also get a free pass for the corrupt practices of their subsidiaries, unless it is proved that they ordered or actively connived in them. Even the Home Office concedes that the current law is an unsatisfactory patchwork in need of reform. Others agree: the OECD complained in March 2005 that Britain was dragging its feet in implementing the convention.

But progress is being made. Last year the Home Office began consulting on a new anti-corruption law. And in June it set up a team of police investigators to focus on bribery abroad by British businesses and money-laundering by corrupt foreign politicians. It has also tightened rules forcing firms that apply for support from the government's export-credit agency to provide information about the agents they employ and the commissions they pay.

Britain presents anti-corruption campaigners with a paradox. Despite the lax rules and the fact that it is neck-deep in the arms and oil trades—both especially prone to corruption—it fares well in international surveys of corruption.

A study by Transparency International, an anti-corruption campaign group, ranks Britain as the sixth most virtuous of 30 countries, ahead of America and well ahead of France. Gary Campkin of the Confederation of British Industry, which represents big business, says this shows that "British business is, by and large, fairly clean in comparison with its competitors." But many think it demonstrates that Britain is better at keeping dodgy business under wraps. The OECD finds it "surprising that no company or individual [in Britain] has been indicted or tried for the offence of bribing a foreign public official".

The Home Office reckons this is not because British businessmen are especially scrupulous, but because it is hard to gather evidence abroad. That seems a poor excuse. In the first half of this year America embarked on 50 prosecutions of alleged foreign bribery and France managed eight.

Chandrashekhar Krishnan of Transparency International attributes the lack of prosecutions in Britain to the lack of political will. Events last week would seem to bear him out.

On December 14th the Serious Fraud Office reluctantly ditched its investigation into allegations, denied by the company, that BAE paid bribes to Saudi Arabian officials in exchange for an agreement to supply, organise and train the Saudi air force, a deal that has produced up to £43 billion ($84 billion) over almost two decades for BAE. The decision came after weeks of intense lobbying by BAE and the Saudi government, which reportedly threatened to cancel a follow-on purchase of 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jet fighters.

Tony Blair said the investigation had been halted because it threatened to harm relations with Saudi Arabia, a key ally in the fight on terrorism and a partner in the Middle East peace process. But suspicions linger that an equal motive was protecting thousands of British jobs.

Whatever the intention, the decision is at least embarrassing, and may be subject to judicial review, if various pressure groups ask the courts to look at it. British delegates to the next international anti-corruption junket, meanwhile, can expect a tougher reception than at the last one. Mark Pieth, the chairman of the OECD's working group on bribery, says he will be raising the matter in a meeting with the British government next month.

"Every time a government minister goes abroad and tries to lecture a corrupt dictator they are going to see this thrown back in their face," says Neil Cooper, of Bradford University's peace-studies department. "It will undermine efforts to promote the rule of law abroad in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan."

i have mentioned my opinion that the brits are very willing to kiss anybody's ass if they have money. they are doing that in bucketloads to arabs and other mohammedans now.

also, there was a time when they genuflected to mahathir mohammed when the latter (thug, racist and bigot, but pretty clever nevertheless) threatened to cancel all brit contracts unless they basically crawled. and so they did.

Britain has been accused of behaving like a banana republic over the controversial decision to drop a fraud investigation into BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia, a story the Guardian has investigated over several years.

The accusation is all the more pointed because it comes from Anwar Ibrahim, the former deputy Malaysian prime minister turned anti-corruption campaigner.

Mr Ibrahim, now the president of AccountAbility, a UK-based group promoting good governance, told Guardian Unlimited: "To say that it was in the national interest to stop the Serious Fraud Office [SFO] investigation was shocking. It reminds me of the modus operandi of a banana republic."

Mr Ibrahim thought long and hard about criticising the British government because he is on good terms with the chancellor, Gordon Brown, and strongly supports his initiatives on Africa, debt cancellation and more aid.

He is also grateful for Tony Blair's support when he was jailed by the Malaysian government on trumped-up charges of corruption and sodomy in 1998.

However, Mr Ibrahim - who fell out with the former Mahathir government over his campaign against corruption in Malaysia - felt compelled to speak out because he believes the BAE episode not only undermines Britain's leadership position on development issues, but also damages all those campaigning against corruption.

"What better reference point and benchmark for corrupt politicians and business people alike around the world to be able to speak of the case of 'Britain's national interests' in justifying cronyism, nepotism or straightforward, arms-length bribery," Mr Ibrahim said in a statement.

Larry Elliott, the Guardian's economics editor, made the same point, arguing that it will be that much harder for Britain to make the case to an African leader to crack down on corruption in return for aid - because he will simply respond by saying: BAE.

Mr Ibrahim feels the attorney general's decision to drop the SFO case on the advice of the prime minister on grounds of national interest pulls the rug from under Mr Brown (lots of fodder for conspiracy theorists here).

For the past 10 years, Mr Brown has staked out a leadership role on international development issues, linking debt cancellation and aid with good governance and anti-corruption measures.

Mr Ibrahim argues that Britain has forfeited a position built up - mainly by the chancellor - over the years.

"Your commission on Africa is as dead as if it were never born," he said, "and efforts to persuade companies and governments to sign up to important accountability innovations such as the Extractive Industry Transparency initiative just became a whole lot harder, if not impossible."

i have the URL of the us army and marine corps handbook on counterinsurgency mentioned in this article, but have been unsuccessful in downloading the darn thing (actually just did download all 282 pages of it). it was given in an interesting dialog in the nytimes book review section between two war historians, max boot and geoffrey wheatcroft. http://usacac.army.mil/cac/repository/materials/coin-fm3-24.pdf

In this piece, blogger neelakantan comes uncannily close to unraveling the NYTeditorial policy on writing about India. Someone sould keep building on this asthere is no dearth of new material, although mostly old wine in a new bottle. Maybe we can come up with a "Write about India for Dummies" bestseller.

Sanjay

Thursday, December 28, 2006How to write about India?

Or how to be successful/popular/sought after as a journalist/writer/author especially abroad. Here are the rule(s) of thumb when writing about India for aWestern audience...

Heres how you go about it.

Your piece has to start well. Therefore you first create, with good vocabulary, a nice paragraph on the social inequities. Keywords to be used arecaste, poverty, illiteracy. Statistics like 80% of India lives on farms or 50%of India is illiterate or 70% of India do not use soap can be very handy. Other than percentages, use population figures. 4,32, 1235 houses do not have morethan 12 volts of electricity for 3 days of the week would make a great sentence.Include a few names like Vidharba, Madurai if you want greater impact other than the usual outskirts of Bangalore or Hyderabad or slums of Mumbai.

If you want to become particularly rabid mention child marriage. A comparisonwith Pakistan and Bangladesh at this juncture would make great reading especially from a literacy rates or the great strides those two nations havemade. If you have to mention China, mention that they are simply a great nationor that they will overtake India in the next 3 minutes. Never, not even once, create an impression that overall India is moving in the right direction.

The second paragraph should be about India's growth in the last few years.Dont forget to add a sentence in the end of this para to denounce the growth. Keep this para as short as possible. Keywords are myth, haves vs have nots,elitist bias. So, a sentence in this paragraph should read, even though IndiasIT and BPO sector has grown, farmers commit suicides. Do not, repeat, do not make a connection that reforms have never really happened in the farm sector andthat it is because reforms have not reached them that this happens. Insist, byrepeated assertion, that it is IT and its success at the expense of the farm sector that causes this to happen.

In the third para or thereabouts, compare to death. Example: Compare the lifeof an educated professional with a gardener and say that the gardener earnsabout 1/10th of what the professional earns. The other good comparison is the number of hutments outside the balcony of your hotel room or the number ofbeggars in trains. Wonder aloud why reforms have not reached beggars travellingon trains. In the same trend close your eyes to the number of people cellphones have reached, also close your eyes to how individuals are pulling themselves outof poverty using these very things.

Over the next few paras, whine and whine. Now that you already know how towrite, just continue in the same vein. For every one sentence of Indias growth, three sentence have to denounce it in the strongest terms. Mention two murderswhich took place recently.

Somewhere just before the end, mention that Indias progress has not benefittedanybody. Do not talk about people who have gotten out of poverty thanks to this progress. Try to ignore gardeners who maintain lawns in the IT campuses, alsoignore cab drivers who are cab owners today. Preferably avoid talking to maidsand security guards who would not have had a job if it were not for this level of growth. Try not to talk to people who are working hard so that their childrenare educated and their next generation gets out of poverty. Also, if you have tomention that the BPO sector attracts fresh graduates, mention that these jobs are bad for their gall bladder at the very least. Ignore the fact that jobs areavailable for the asking in India at almost all levels. Cooks to caterers tosecurity guards to courier boys to shop assistants to technology architects to structural engineers. Also never once, ask the question to the man on the street- has their life changed for the better over the last 10 years. (Believe me, the resounding answer, except indark corners will be a resounding yes.)

Your last paragraph has to sound a warning to all those who read your article.Mention about how people and companies and the government has to take moreresponsibility for poverty and paint it with a broad brush of "private public partnership to make a significant impact".

Btw, India really is about contrasts. While not getting carried away by the growth and saying all is well here, let us also not go to the other extreme ofsaying that the reforms have done nothing and that all is wrong here. Neitherwill reforms take away inequity all of a sudden nor will inequity take away reforms. Both these arguments miss the wood for the trees.http://ecophilo.blogspot.com/2006/12/how-to-write-about-india.html

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

in the spirit of christmas (natch!) here is why christism is a dumb semitic cult for the terminally clueless.

if you are a believer in this stuff, here's something for you: your god -- ye olde yhwh himself -- called me the other day and said, 'rajeev, go out there and raise $10 million. or else i'll call oral roberts "home".' so in case you don't want oral roberts to go "home", please send money. amazingly, this stuff works -- idiot rednecks in the (american) south did send $10 million to old oral when he made a similar plea a few years ago. as p t barnum said, there's a sucker born every minute.

so, now to those reasons:

237. they put up all these lights (and stars in india), totally light up the place and waste enormous amounts of electricity -- think serious global warming -- to celebrate the mythical birth of their hoax 'founder'. christmas, in case you just tuned in, is the stolen druidic celebration of the winter solstice. there is no evidence that jesus was born on dec 25th, and in fact, there is no evidence that he was born at all. he is a hoax.

so we should start campaigns to outlaw christmas lighting. it adds the equivalent of 100,000 cars belching CO2 into the atmosphere. this is serious environmental degradation.

238. to add to the environmental damage, they cut down millions of trees, bring them into their homes, and then toss them in the garbage, adding to landfill problems. this is the equivalent of another 100,000 cars worth of C02 not being recycled because the trees were cut down. and this also means more good land being taken up for trash. in case the trees are plastic, that stuff will not degrade for 10,000 years.

so this entire tree business needs to be outlawed as a major waste. where are you, ye NGOs of india, who are so concerned about pollution and the environment?

239. they are taking up increasing amounts of land to preserve the moldy bones of their dead people. the idiotic idea behind this is that they will eventually all rise to heaven (ha, ha! reminds me of the 72 white raisins story!) *in* these moldy bones. yeah right -- you really think you want to walk around in heaven in the remnants of your bones? if not, why do you care if your bones are recycled into the earth?

so this cemetery business is total bullshits. at the rate these christists are multiplying, eventually, *all* the productive farmland in their part of the world will become cemeteries. there should be a campaign to bury these blighters *vertically* so that they take up only a 2 ft*2 ft space, rather than a 6ft * 3 ft space. campaign, anyone? so much more sensible to cremate dead people.

you know about colma, california, right? it's a town near san francisco, which basically is a bunch of cemeteries connected by roads. behold the future of christist cities: they will all become like colma. lots of sick jokes about the 'dead center of town'.

Monday, December 25, 2006

yes, more gibberish about mohammedan contributions to civilization. in point of fact, there are no mohammedan contributions to civilization, unless you count the fine art of lying (al-taqiyah) as a contribution.

---------- Forwarded message ----------From: Shahryar

More lies about the mythical Islamic golden age repeated by the usual gullible ill-educated western journalist!

Islam's golden age comes to life

Students celebrate scholars and poets of a great empire

Poets and philosophers, merchants and mathematicians, artisans and astronomers re-enacted the Golden Age of Islam at the Al-Arqam Islamic School in south Sacramento on Friday.

The artistry, story-telling and role-playing was a creation of 233 students from kindergarten through ninth grade who brought to life the sights, tastes and smells of an Islamic empire that spanned three continents from the eighth to the 13th centuries.

From incense to Turkish coffee, dates to oranges, minarets to miniature mosques and castles -- you could find it all at The Islamic Civilization Exhibit and Festival in the school's multipurpose room.

Pageantry was accompanied by plenty of food for thought.

In the midst of this "village" teeming with children dressed in Saudi, Afghan, Palestinian, Pakistani, Egyptian and Moroccan garments, a large gold and blue tent set the stage for a debate among nine famous Muslim scholars.

Ibn Battuta (12-year-old Abdurrahman Husnein)was considered the greatest tourist of the 14th century. He followed the Prophet Muhammad's advice to "seek knowledge even if it takes you to China."

Ibn Sina (10-year old Belal Ahmed) insisted that his Canon of Medicine was a more important contribution because "My work saves lives!" Sina lived from 980 to 1037.

The father of algebra, Muhammad Ibn Musa Al-Khawarizmi (11-year-old Javed Maroon) responded, "I created the decimal system and the use of zero ... I educate the lives you save." The mathematician lived from 770 to 840.

Imam Malik (13-year-old Ossama Kamel), who compiled thousands of sayings from the Prophet Muhammad, warned the others against arrogance. "No one who has an atom's weight of pride in his heart will enter the garden," he quoted the prophet as saying.

Kamel said the festival "gives us pride in our religion -- these scholars are Islam, and people who are doing wrong today, that's not really Islam."

Dozens of other Muslim scholars were represented, including seventh-grader Nimra A. Syed's favorite, Al-Jazari, the first-known mechanical engineer who invented water clocks, combination locks and double-action water pumps.

She said that Al-Jazari, who lived from 1150 to 1220, was born in Iraq and wrote "The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices."

"The coolest thing about this guy is some inventors don't look like they have fun in their lives, and he made some practical-joke devices," Nimra said. The inventions included a drinking container that looked full when empty, and a glass that looked empty but spilled water out when it tipped over.

And fourth-grader Shareef Sadek was captivated by Abu-Uthman Al-Jahiz, a writer who penned an environmentalist yarn, "The Story of Abu Said, The Recycler." It's a tale of a man who would hoard his garbage and sift through it, saving items he could re-use such as pomegranate skins for red dye and chicken bones for fuel.

The exhibit was filled with fascinating lessons, such as the origin of the word "mattress," which comes from matrah, Arabic for "a place where things are thrown." In addition, the youths said Muslim doctors were the first to document patient histories, and carried out the first cataract surgery.

Many kids flocked to the market, where Safa Khan and Hameed Ahmadi, two 9-year-olds, hawked oranges, dates, dried apricots and eggplant.

"Try some oranges," Khan said with a smile, then confessed, "I'd rather go with some sugar-coated almonds."

Vice principal Dalia Wardany, who organized the festival, said her students learned the power of knowledge.

"These kids are the torch bearers of our religion," said Wardany. "If they rely on their skills and talents, they can do something positive for future generations."

Hyd kid beaten for wearing kumkum

BEATEN TRACK: Sarvesh Yadav claims he was beaten up by his English teacher for wearing kumkum and mala in school.

New Delhi: In a bizarre incident, a student was allegedly beat up by his teacher for attending the school wearing kumkum and mala.

Sarvesh Yadav, a fifth standard student of Hyderabad's St Christ Church School, claims he was beaten up by his English teacher and sent home for wearing kumkum and mala after taking the Ayappaswamy diksha.

He was also not allowed to appear for his exams. His mother, Jyoti Yadav, says they had not been told about any such rule. "How can wearing a bindi be this big an issue. If he doesn't want to follow the rules, let him sit at home," she says.

But the school authorities denied the allegations. "All these days, we have allowed him to wear that dress. But they had made some plan when they came to school today. We don't have any religious bias and treat all children equally—be it Christians, Muslim or Hindus," says the headmistress, Miss S Solomon.

The school has been provided security by the police after an angry mob allegedly manhandled the school incharge.

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mehbubani is a smart guy, but anyone who has to quote nehru and a. sen about india is way behind the times. (note that a. sen said that hindus are no good: the only good kings in india were a buddhist and a mohammedan, ashoka and akbar, which shows more than anything else a. sen's ignorance. he hasnt heard of rajaraja chola or krishnadeva raya, or he ignores them because they are hindus. similarly, j. nehru's history is mostly fiction and may actually have been written by irfan habib's father!)

---------- Forwarded message ----------From: vps

Asian nations grow more confident, more optimistic, even as the US withdraws from global leadership, fearful after the 9/11 attacks and lashing out in anger like a wounded animal, without plans or purpose. By condoning torture and instigating war while overlooking pressing problems, the US has abandoned lofty principles it once embraced. With that context, former Singapore ambassador to the United Nations, Kishore Mahbubani, offers predictions about the direction India is likely to take as an emerging power: The country will retain its cultural pride and not shy away from its clothing styles or cultural traditions. Likewise, India will show diminished interest in the West. The country will retain democracy, respect for human rights and other values, but apply those values in the context of its own history and culture. Finally, India will continue striving for inclusiveness rather than exclusiveness. As such, India may once again act as a bridge for multiple cultures – and show that as a major power it does not stand alone, but can cooperate fruitfully with the rest of the world. – YaleGlobal

India: Emerging as Eastern or Western Power?

India can follow in the footsteps of Japan or China – or even forge its own path

SINGAPORE: Pundits agree: India will be the third great Asian power to emerge, after Japan and China. Japan emerged self-consciously as a Western power. China has made no pretensions in that direction. What will be India's path?

Figuring India's direction is not easy. What is the nature of era we are living in, Eastern or Western? Also what is the nature of Indian civilization itself?

A century ago, we lived in the Western era of human history. Japan emerged as a Western power because there seemed to be no alternative to Western power in 1868. Japanese Meiji reformer Yukichi Fukuzawa said: "Our immediate policy, therefore, should be to lose no time in waiting for the enlightenment of our neighbouring countries in order to join them in developing Asia, but rather to depart from their ranks and cast our lot with the civilized countries of the West.1 Sun Yat Sen also acknowledged superiority of the West: "We, the modern people of China, are all useless, but if in the future we use Western civilization as a model, we can easily turn weakness into strength, and the old into the new.2

Similarly, India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said: "The search for the sources of India's strength and for her deterioration and decay is long and intricate. Yet the recent causes of that decay are obvious enough. She fell behind in the march of technique, and Europe, which had long been backward in many matters, took the lead in technical progress.3 Would these Asian statesmen, if alive today, readily acknowledge the superiority of the West?

Many in the West have never felt so insecure, both in their daily lives and sense of future. Remarkably, one man sitting in a cave in Afghanistan has unleashed much of this insecurity. A few young English Muslims aggravated it further. Lou Dobbs has convinced many Americans that outsourcing to Asia is the next big threat to America. Europeans, by contrast, feel threatened when a British citizen of Indian ancestry, Lakshmi Mittal, tries to buy a European steel company, all the while playing by European rules. All these are examples of insecurity.

If the Goldman Sachs BRICs study is accurate, three of the four largest economies in the year 2050 will be Asian: China, USA, Indian and Japan. It is hard to engage in Western triumph if this triumph does not rest on a conviction of perpetually superior economic performance.

Something equally important has occurred in the moral dimension. If anyone had suggested 15 years ago that Western countries would allow the use of torture, he would have been dismissed out of hand. But this has happened. In 2005, Irene Khan, the head of the Amnesty International, said: "Guantanamo is the gulag of our times." If her statement was untrue, there should have been a rush of denials from the West. If her statement was true, an equally strong chorus of voices would have demanded that this had to stop. Apart from a few flutters of regret, nothing really happened. The gulag continued.

This silence of the West has resulted in a profound shift in how leading Asian minds view the West. Instead of seeing the West as a paragon of virtue, they now see an emperor with no moral clothing.

The good news here is that many of these "Western" values may not be uniquely Western, and other custodians could emerge.

The West believes that it alone championed "freedom" and "tolerance." But Amartya Sen points to the Indian emperor Ashoka, "who during the third century BCE covered the country with inscriptions on stone tablets about good behaviour and wise governance, including a demand for basic freedoms for all – indeed, he did not exclude women and slaves as Aristotle did.4

Sen's point is that the great divide between the East and West may be artificial, that the values of freedom and tolerance, reason and logic, may not be uniquely Western.

Against this backdrop, let me offer concrete predictions about how India will emerge:

My first prediction is that Indians, unlike the Japanese, are going to wear less rather than more Western clothing. Clothing helps define one's identity. Try to imagine another Mahatma Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru without their trademark Indian garb.

Second, India will gradually drift away from the West. The West will continue to lose the magical place it has enjoyed in the global imagination. Part of this is will be a result of relative economic performance. There was a time when many Asians believed that Westerners were inherently superior. Today, the cultural confidence of Asians is immense. Most people in the West have not noticed this because cultural confidence is intangible. But Asians are fully aware, no longer amazed to see Asians top the lists of leading global entrepreneurs or academic achievers in leading American universities.

But there is another practical reason why many in the West have not noticed the rising cultural confidence of Asians. Most Western opinions are generated by a small group of Western pundits – whether they be in "The New York Times" or "Financial Times." A deep conviction of Western civilizational superiority seeps through their writings. Strangely enough, in our information-rich universe, Western voices continue to speak to other Western voices on the basis of deep-seated assumptions of Western superiority, while the rest of the world drifts from these assumptions.

With the West losing its magical place in the human imagination, it is also likely that the desire to emulate the West will diminish in India and the rest of the world. India will continue with some of the finest political traditions it has inherited from the West: Democracy, a respect for human rights and respect for the rule of law. But increasingly, Indians will claim these traditions as their own, just as Western philosophers happily accepted the work of Islamic rationalists and claimed their ideas as their own.

My third prediction is that, with the growing detachment between the West and the rest, India will once again resume its natural role as the meeting point for the great civilizations. At a time when many in the West are convinced that the West cannot co-exist in peace with the Islamic world, they will increasingly marvel at how India has accommodated many civilizations – including the Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic and Christian civilizations – and how most live in peace with one another most of the time.

A spirit of inclusiveness pervades Indian political and social culture. While the West often tries to discuss the world in black-and-white terms, the Indian mind sees the nuances.

Take Iran as a case study. The West cannot see beyond the relatively new and brief theocratic rule of Iran. Indians however see a rich and deep Persian civilization that has contributed so much to the development of both Asian and Indian cultures. Hence, while the West insists on cutting itself off from Iran, Indians naturally believe in engagement, even though the Indian government disapproves of the Iranian nuclear program.

This capacity for engaging other cultures may well mean that India could play a bridging role between the West and the East. Or, it could play a bigger role of convincing leading Western minds that they should stop seeing themselves as guardians of one leading civilization. A great crusade is needed to convince the West that it is essentially no different from the rest. India may well play a leading role in this crusade.

Kishore Mahbubani is the dean and practice professor of public policy at the LKY School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, and author of "Can Asians Think" and "Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust between America and the World." This article is adapted from remarks delivered by Professor Mahbubani at the annual lecture of the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, in New York City on November 9, 2006.

Making sophisticated products cheaply and in huge numbers is how the giants hope to grow.

By David Kirkpatrick, Fortune senior editor

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Carly Fiorina may have gotten some things wrong when she was CEO of Hewlett-Packard, but she did show an admirably early understanding of one of the most important trends in tech. Back as far as 1999, she was championing something HP called World e-Inclusion, a program to focus the company's resources on creating products and services for the world's poor and developing nations.

Today, efforts like that are top of mind at many of the biggest technology companies. AMD, Cisco, Google (Charts), IBM (Charts), Intel (Charts), Microsoft (Charts), Motorola, Nokia and Sun, among others, are resolutely focused on the opportunities presented by the developing world. They are interested because of a wonderful combination of social concern and greed.

This is the largest market any of these companies have ever seen - the first ever whose size can be routinely measured in billions of people.

The entire world is hungry for technology. I recently had the privilege to give a speech on technology and the developing world to a group at the United Nations in New York. In the speech I enumerate many specific initiatives big tech companies have launched. (Ironically, Fiorina's successor at HP Mark Hurd seems to have deep-sixed the e-Inclusion work.)

Americans too often talk about the tech industry as if it primarily transacted its business here. But the biggest companies see it otherwise. They need growth, and realize it can be had helping the poor. The logic is simple - if you provide the poor with tools that increase their earning power, they will be able to earn more and pay you for those tools.

The appetite for tech is striking in countries around the world, even in places you might not expect. I recently asked Paul Mountford, Cisco's (Charts) head of emerging markets, if there were any new countries he had encountered that were aiming to use IT to speed up growth in the way that Korea, Taiwan and Singapore have done in recent decades. He said the first country that came to his mind was Libya.

The cellphone is by far the most important tool for connection in developing countries. There are an estimated 1.5 billion cellphones now in use in the developing world. That figure will grow to at least 3 billion over the next five years. In India alone, 5 million new customers sign up for cellphones every week.

More than 80 percent of the world's population, calculates Motorola, already lives in an area covered by wireless networks. People are starting to talk about owning a cellphone as a basic human right. And cellphones in the developing world are generally used heavily for the micro-businesses that so many individuals and families there maintain.

Motorola (Charts) already has many millions of orders for its new Motofone, built specifically for emerging markets. Even slimmer than the celebrated RAZR, it will sell for around $30.

Motofone gets up to 400 hours of standby time on one battery charge, enabling its use in environments where electricity is scarce. It uses a very large screen that works in reflected light, using no internal lamps, specially enabled for text messaging. (Short text messages are even more important in developing economies than they are in developed ones.)

The Motofone also illustrates how the poorest markets are increasingly served with the most sophisticated high technology. To make Motofone both simple and cheap enough, Motorola had to apply state-of-the art design and electronics.

The business strategist C.K. Prahalad has had a huge impact in the tech industry with his book "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid." It explains, among other things, how products made for developing countries can prove tremendously valuable in developed ones as well.

You are likely to want a Motofone. But technologies like this will appear first in the developing world, and only later penetrate places like the United States.

Another example is the so-called $100 laptop for students in developing countries championed by Nicholas Negroponte of MIT's Media Lab. Negroponte's team has made breakthroughs in the screen, power source and physical design, among other things. People will salivate for it in the United States and Europe even as it gets launched next year in Latin America, Africa and rural Asia.

This trend will continue the profoundly anti-inflationary global impact of the tech industry, whose products typically get cheaper even as they improve. (For instance, the newest iPod shuffle holds 240 songs and costs $80, but replaced one that held 120 songs for $100.)

In coming years we will see an explosion of new technologies for broadband, for mobile computing, for education and health care - and the first place in the world many of these will take root will be in developing countries where there is no legacy system problem, no installed base, just a huge mass of eager people. The next five years will begin a golden era for technology to empower the poor.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

this is an excellent example of the way white people have always felt about pathans. they have been intimidated and awed by the violence and primitive brutishness of the tribes. also, the pathans have actually defeated the christists in the british-afghan wars, wiping out their expeditionary force, including the whites and their indian conscripts, massacring them to basically the last man.

therefore the white christists are scared of pathans. they are not scared of hindus, because hindus are not violent. net net, the only people who get any respect are the violent ones. we need some violent people to get respect.

this same fear is seen in the manomohansingh-soniagandhi-arjunsingh type of person in india. thus they will do anything to appease the mohammedans, imputing afghan-type violent tendencies to them. and it is equally fruitless because it simply increases their demands.

not only is it the white guys, but i also believe that certain white females -- such as barbara crossette, robin raphel -- have entertained notions about afghan virility that have clouded their judgment. in this case it is a mixture of horror and fascination about the afghans' well-established preference for anal sex, and for young boys. i have read british colonial-era books too in which the white women had this fantasy-horror-desire about being raped by these very manly and tough pathans.

To settle disputes, Mr Kuchi has two main options. He can order a guilty party to compensate its victim with cash, a practice known as wich pur, "dry debt", or he can order the two parties to exchange women, or lund pur, "wet debt". By binding the antagonists together—just as in medieval European diplomacy—lund pur is considered more effective. Typically it involves exchanging a 15-year-old, a ten-year-old and a five-year-old girl, to be married into three succeeding generations of the enemy clan. Thereby, and though human-rights groups understandably revile the practice, Pushtuns have peace and happy grandfathers.

i dont think 'lund pur' means exactly 'wet debt', if i remember my hindi/urdu, it is rather more graphic and picturesque than that.

and the white guy writing this seems a little jealous of 'the happy grandfathers', ie. the guys getting to marry the fifteen-year-olds.

this sort of acceptance of extreme chattelization of women betrays the white guy's own semitic perspective that women are worth nothing.